


And they lived (happily ever after)

by orphan_account



Category: The Immortals - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:56:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28139550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In which Rikash lives.
Relationships: Rikash Moonsword & Veralidaine Sarrasri, Rikash Moonsword/Veralidaine Sarrasri
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	And they lived (happily ever after)

**Author's Note:**

> For noun. Happy Yuletide!

The middle head of the serpent shrilled in rage and pain. It whipped frantically, almost tossing Rikash several times. But the Stormwing held on, defiantly, as the serpent drooped, then dissolved into a liquid soup. Daine watched as Rikash fluttered his wings, as if to shake off the last traces of the chaos creature, and then flew back up again to survey the battle. Suddenly, he gave a cry and darted off. She saw what he had seen: In the northeast, so far away that only a raptor—or a girl who had the eyes of one—might see, a lone Stormwing took to the air and flapped away.  
As a sparrow hawk, she caught up with Rikash easily. He was fast for a Stormwing, but no match for her shape. 

Further to the east she flew. Outside of the city now, she could see Numair’s magic wrapped up in that of another mage’s far below. She thought she heard Rikash shout something after her, but she couldn’t catch it over the wind ringing in her ears. She had no time for either of them now.  
They each had their part to play. Numair would manage—he always did. 

Before long, she was fighting Ozorne, no time to think about Numair, Rikash, or any of her friends. She was naked, bled out, and left with nothing but a silver claw in her hand. It was enough.

Rikash arrived as she lay there, covered in Ozorne’s gory remains, too weary to get up.  
“What took you?”  
“Oh, I got distracted. I see you managed well enough here. No piece left for me, then?”  
“Plenty of pieces,” she managed to choke out. Her stomach retched. She tried to roll away from the filth. Rikash pulled her away as gently as a Stormwing’s claw could. She was glad. Even his odor was nothing against the smell of blood and intestines.  
Ozorne’s stone was stuck to her chest. She picked it up and was about to fling it away, when the Stormwing cried out. “Don’t!”  
It was too late. The stone shattered against a tree, and Chaos engulfed her. 

The Gods forced an impossible choice on her, and she chose Numair. Then she fought for the Stormwings’ right to choose as well. Fair was fair. Rikash had been with her through all of it, up until Chaos had swallowed her. Had he survived that? She didn’t know, but she hoped. Diamondflame took her back to Port Legann, and she set off looking for Numair. 

Rikash was waiting for her. His back was turned to her, but she recognized him by his white-blond hair. 

“Rikash! I’m fair glad to see you! I was afraid Uusoae got to you!” He turned his head and nodded to her, but said nothing. “Is… is everything alright?” He turned then, and she saw the sadness in his eyes. Then he hopped aside, and she saw the body.

He looked unharmed, almost peaceful. Inar Hadensra lay a few feet off, bloodied and broken. Daine couldn’t move. She just stood there, Cloud by her side, Numair at her feet, Rikash next to him.

“That’s why I was late. I saw the blow that killed him. Had to finish off Inar.” 

He hesitated. Cleared his throat. Swallowed. “I didn’t touch him. Either of them. Afterwards.” She didn’t hear him. What was there to say?  
“I would have told you. But you threw that chaos stone before I had a chance.”  
She collapsed.

******

Rikash came to the burial, standing far enough away that his stench didn’t reach the other mourners. He tried to talk to her afterwards. She didn’t answer. She knew he wasn’t to blame, but she needed him to be. Why was he alive, when Numair wasn’t? Why were any of them, when he was—when he had been the greatest mage alive? 

When her ma and grandda had been killed, she had gone mad. She’d run with the pack on all fours. She’d lost herself. Ever since, she had been afraid of the madness lurking somewhere within her. Now she knew she needn’t have been. The unthinkable had happened, and here she was. She longed for madness, longed to lose herself, but no matter what shape she took, she couldn’t escape her own mind anymore. He’d taught her too well.

The last time she’d thought he was dead, she’d razed a palace to the ground. She wished she could do that again. But what was there left to destroy, really? The world was a mess already.

******  
Her friends—human and animal—were all around her. She couldn’t breathe. She needed air. She took off as a falcon, higher and higher, until the air felt deliciously thin and the ground lay distant below even to her keen eyes. Rikash found her, or maybe she found him. 

“Tell me what happened.” He didn’t question her. He just told her, in his usual, wry way, how he’d seen a magical blow Numair had not anticipated, how he’d dropped his pursuit of Ozorne to step in, how he was too late, how Numair had fallen and he’d struck at Inar Hadensra in his moment of triumph. It felt good not to be coddled. 

They flew silently, until the sun went down and her wings grew weary. Rikash led her to a cave high up on the cliffs over Port Legann. She’d found Kitten in a place like this, once. They’d been enemies then. Or thought they were. What were they now? Allies? Against whom, now that the war was over?  
Right now, he was company, the only one she could stand. The humans had been Numair’s friends before she’d met them. They had their own grief, and she couldn’t stand it. The animals were hers, but they couldn’t fathom her pain. Rikash had been her—friend? Friend. That was what they were.—first and foremost. He understood her grief without his own pain interfering too much.

They sat at the entrance of the cave, looking out over dark waters in silence for a long time. At one point, Rikash moved closer and she wrinkled her nose without thinking. He hopped away again before she could apologize.

“Penny for your thoughts?” It sounded casual, but she knew he wasn’t. Since when did she know Rikash well enough to tell? She pushed the thought away. Not the point now.

“They tricked me, you know?”  
“Who did?”  
“The Gods. They must have known he was dead. Gainel gave me his coat. He must have known. I chose the mortal realms for Numair, and he was no longer there.”  
“All gods are tricksters. Don’t trust them.” He studied her. “Would you have chosen different, if you’d known?”  
She paused. She hadn’t thought about it like that. “It’s fair funny.” Her laugh was bitter. “I might have if they’d told me. But knowing what I know—that they didn’t tell me—I wouldn’t. I want nothing to do with Gods and their games anymore. Does that make sense?”  
“I think it does. Remember, I made the same choice.” He turned to her. “Thanks to you, I might add.”  
She considered this. It was true, she found. She was immeasurably glad she had done that right now. She said nothing.

Rikash looked out over the dark waters below.  
“You and me, we don’t belong to either realm. We make our home.”

******  
Slowly, her life took on an appearance of normalcy. She returned to Corus and threw all her energy into rebuilding. There was much to do for a wildmage: Many immortals had chosen the Mortal Realms, and not all were peaceful. Even those who were trying to be were bound to end up in arguments and misunderstandings. The trouble were those blessedly rare hours when there was nothing to do. 

She kept flying. Rikash kept finding her. They didn’t always talk, but he stayed close. She found that she didn’t mind the company, not even the smell. If he came too close or the wind turned, she simply changed her nose. 

“How do you always know when to look for me?” she asked, sitting in a tree high above the city. She had several of those hiding spots by now. He knew them all, but she wasn’t hiding from him, so it was no matter.

He grinned. “I have my sources.” She snorted. “Did Cloud ask you to babysit me?” Then she stopped. “Wait--are you here to prevent me from jumping off a cliff?” 

His head turned sharply, a gesture more bird than human. “Well, that depends. Are you going to?” His voice was hard, no trace of his usual wry humor. 

“Rikash—no! Gods, no.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”

“Good,” he said. “I wasn’t so sure for a time there. Don’t you forget it.”

She tried a smile. It was wobbly, but it stayed. “I didn’t know you care!”

“Shut up. It’s too troublesome with you mortals. You keep dying all the time anyway. No need to hurry it up.”

“I won’t,” she reassured him. “I just need to find my place, is all. You know, when I lost my ma in Galla, I lost myself as well. And ever since, I spent so long trying to figure out who I am, and I thought I’d done it, and now it’s all been ripped away again.” She swallowed.

“He taught me who I am, you know? And I don’t even know what we were, or were about to become, but I knew he would be there for me. He was my pack. And that was wondrous, but it also meant we were all tangled up in each other. My quarters in the palace, you know, they are where they are because his were next door. And now he’s no longer there and it makes no sense that I’m still there.”

“Did you know that four of the humans came to me to ask me to look after you, after they noticed our little sundown chats? I think you underestimate how much of a place you’ve made for yourself here. Seems to me there’s a whole palace of people who want you here, not to mention your animal friends.”

She hadn’t known. She wanted to ask who had come, and how that conversation had gone. Involuntarily, she pictured Alanna holding her nose with one hand and her sword raised with the other. But she didn’t ask.

“Besides, I’d miss our little chats. I haven’t gazed at this many sunsets with a pretty girl since I was a young lad of two hundred or so.” He picked at one of the bones in his hair.

“Thank you.”

“What for?”

For being here with her. For telling her these things. For being a friend that she hadn’t known she wanted or needed. 

“Just thank you.”

*************  
The next time they met, Rikash seemed nervous. He didn’t talk much as they flew, but he kept glancing at her. She didn’t know what to make of his behavior. They flew out to one of her favorite spots, an abandoned Griffons’ nest high up in a tree in the Royal Forest. 

“Daine?”

“What is it? You’ve been hopping around like a fledgling all evening.” She had her back turned to him to inspect a hole in the nest’s wall. She should patch it up, she thought, so the nest wouldn’t grow unstable.

Rikash swallowed, then moved closer. “I have a gift for you.” She was surprised. She hadn’t noticed him carrying anything. When she turned, there was a single feather on the ground before her feet: pure steel, beautiful and deadly.

She shrank back from it. “Why would you give me that?” Before he could answer, her mind was busily replaying scenes from Carthak—Rikash wheedling himself into Ozorne’s good graces, offering a feather, trapping Ozorne in Stormwing form.

“What kind of game have you been playing, Rikash Moonsword? Because I was there the last time!” She flung herself out of the nest, transforming into bird’s form on the way, human tears leaking into feathers. She had been wrong to trust him. He was a Stormwing. She should have known better. She sped home, not listening to his cries.

**********  
Somehow, Rikash’s betrayal hurt worse than anything that had happened since Numair’s funeral. She had come to trust him more than anyone around her except for Cloud. It had been so easy to talk to him—too easy, she knew now.

Without the option of flying, she tried to escape through working even harder than before, but it was no good. She was miserable. It took Cloud several days to wheedle the whole story out of her. The mare huffed when Daine had finished. 

“Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand him? The stinker’s not stupid, you know? If he meant to trick you, why choose a trick that he knows you know of?”

“Why else would he have done it, then?”

“Oh, what do I know about Stormwings? Seems to me you should ask him!”

Daine buried her face in the mare’s neck. “I can’t keep hiding, can I?”

Cloud nipped at her arm. “You can’t. Leastways you shouldn’t.”

******  
It took her a while to find Rikash, once she was ready to try. Somehow, she wanted to talk to him in her human form, and that ruled out looking for him in the air. She found him outside the city by the river bank. 

“Rikash?”

He looked at her warily. 

“Have you come back to fight?”

She sighed. “No. And I’m sorry. I’m fearing I overreacted. Somehow, I don’t think you tried to trick me.” She paused. “But I still don’t understand. Why did you want to give me a feather?”

He blushed. “It was stupid. Forget about it.”

She shook her head. “I need you to tell me.”

He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. The Gods forced you into a choice under false pretenses. You’ve lost your pack. It was an—an offer. If you want another choice of immortality, you have it. If you want a new pack, you can have that, too. If you want to make a new life, find a new purpose, that’s a way of doing it. I just… I wanted you to know you have options.” He shrugged. “That’s the gist of it. I had a little speech prepared, but you flew off before I could deliver it.”

She looked at him in wonder. “I liked this one fine. Thank you, Rikash. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have accused you.”

He looked down. “Well, it wasn’t a wholly selfless gift, was it?”

She raised her eyebrow. “Oh?”

He shuffled. “I’ve told you that it’s hard for Stormwings to have children. There are so few of us left now, at least in my clan.” He looked away. “It’s hard to find a mate.”

This left her speechless. She hadn’t known. Hadn’t even trusted his friendship a few days ago. Stormwings mated for life, she knew that. 

“I… I’m sorry I screamed at you. And I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a Stormwing.” She felt stupid. What else could she say?

“Rikash?”  
“Yes?”

“Will you give me that feather? I’m not making promises. But I’d like to keep it.” 

Wordlessly, he plucked a feather with his beak and offered it to her. She held it up until the sun made the steel gleam. Then she pocketed it carefully in her satchel. 

“Thank you! I’ll treasure it always.”

His voice was hoarse.

“You’re welcome, Veralidaine Sarrasri.”

“Do you want to fly?”

He looked relieved. “Always.”

And they did.


End file.
